Attorney General orders more episodes of the “The Wire”, or a movie
Sometimes government officials draw fire for potentially overstepping their authority — but Attorney General Eric Holder will probably get some praise for ordering the writers of the critically-acclaimed television series HBO “The Wire” to come up with more episodes or a movie.
The gritty fictional series, which ran five seasons on HBO, showed the raw side of Baltimore as it endured hundreds of murders annually and a rampant drug scene. The show focused on the cash-strapped city police trying to root out crime as well as the drug dealers fighting for turf, using children to run their corners and the related effects on the city.
On Tuesday three of the actors, Wendell Pierce (“Bunk”), Sonja Sohn (“Kima”) and Jim True-Frost (“Prez”), dropped by the Justice Department to join Holder in trying to draw attention to the issue of protecting children from drug abuse and exploitation.
But Holder could not resist a plea — well really an order — to the writers David Simon and Ed Burns for more.
“I want to speak directly to Mr. Burns and Mr. Simon: Do another season of ‘The Wire’,” Holder said, drawing laughter and applause from the audience. “That’s actually at a minimum. … If you don’t do a season, do a movie. We’ve done HBO movies, this is a series that deserves a movie. I want another season or I want a movie. I have a lot of power Mr. Burns and Mr. Simon.”
Wendell “Bunk” Pierce, who is now on the latest HBO hit “Treme”, chimed in with a “hear hear.”
Attorney General Holder says he plans to stick around for a while
Eric Holder, President Barack Obama’s attorney general, has been castigated by liberals and conservatives for his decisions about prosecuting terrorism suspects in criminal courts, defending a law that effectively bans gay marriages and then dropping it, and efforts to go after fraud in the financial markets that have resulted in few senior corporate executives going to jail.
Despite all of that, he still professes a love for the job at the Justice Department and made it clear to reporters on Tuesday that he has no intention of going anywhere, at the very least until his wife says otherwise.
“I’m happy. I’m content. My wife says that I’ve got some more time and as long as she’s in the same place, I’ll be around,” Holder said during his first pen and pad briefing with reporters in over a year. “I like this job. This is my last swing through this great department and a lot of ways is a bittersweet experience.”
“I started here back in 1976 with little experience and lot more hair, actually a lot more hair, the styles were fundamentally different — and don’t anybody come up with a picture, that would really be unfair,” he said.
We dug up this photo (right) from the Reuters archives from 1997 when he was deputy attorney general. But we’ll leave it to others to find one from the 1970s when he served as an attorney in the public corruption section.
Holder acknowledged that not every day as attorney general has been great, which was obvious earlier this month when he finally caved in to demands that the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, be prosecuted by a military commission instead of in a criminal court.
That decision was a reversal of one of his defining moments, announcing with great fanfare in 2009 that Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators would be prosecuted in federal court just blocks from where the World Trade Center twin towers once stood.
Robert Kennedy hailed on 50th anniversary of becoming Attorney General
(Updates with remarks by Kennedy’s daughter on gun control.)
Robert F. Kennedy, who made history as attorney general in the 1960s, was remembered as one of the Justice Department’s most effective leaders who fought for civil rights and created an enduring and inspiring legacy.
Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the swearing-in of Kennedy, who was chosen to be the nation’s 64th attorney general by his brother, President John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy’s widow Ethel and other Kennedy family members were joined by civil rights leaders and current and former department officials in the building’s Great Hall to pay tribute to the late attorney general.
With a portrait of Kennedy and his old office chair on display, the current Attorney General Eric Holder told a packed audience of several hundred that Kennedy had inspired him to join the department’s Criminal Division as a young lawyer in 1976.
Holder noted Kennedy’s historic efforts to integrate the University of Alabama in 1963, calling it a defining “act of courage.”
All smiles at the White House, for a moment anyway
Earlier today President Barack Obama signed a law about prison sentences for possession of crack cocaine and powder cocaine and the photograph of the smiling group of people who supported the legislation gave us a brief pause.
The Democrats and Republicans gathered around the president in the Oval Office rarely agree on anything. Let’s take a minute to dissect this photograph.
There’s Attorney General Eric Holder (pictured second from the left), a close confidante of Obama’s. But he has drawn intense criticism for his plan to prosecute the five alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in a criminal court in the heart of Manhattan (now highly unlikely). He also has been lambasted by Republicans for affording full legal rights to terrorism suspects who have been arrested on U.S. soil.
Next to him is Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy who has been the president’s man shepherding through the Senate his two Supreme Court justice nominees. The second nominee, Elena Kagan is expected to win Senate support but with only a handful of Republicans backing her.
Then just over the president’s left shoulder is Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Obama’s home state of Illinois. He has been a big proponent of bringing terrorism suspects to trial in traditional criminal courts and even housing some of the suspects at a prison in his state (can we say jobs during a recession?).
Now it gets interesting because just next to Durbin, sort of lingering in the back is Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, a leading critic of the president and his buddy Eric Holder.
It must be a joke ’cause they are all laughing. Can you lie while you laugh?
Holder goes from war zone to the strike zone (hopefully)
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who just returned from Afghanistan, is making another trip — to a baseball game.
The nation’s top law enforcement official will be throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at tonight’s game between the Washington Nationals and the New York Mets, a Justice Department spokeswoman said.
The 59-year-old Holder, who grew up in New York City, is a longtime fan of the Mets, and a big baseball as well as a basketball fan.
He just returned to Washington from a one-day visit to Kabul, where he met President Hamid Karzai as well as senior Afghan and U.S. officials to discuss fighting corruption and other law enforcement matters.
Tonight’s baseball game will be the first time that Holder will make the ceremonial first pitch as attorney general. No word on whether he is practicing his fastball.
For more Reuters political news, click here.
Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Holder at news conference at Justice Department)
Law & Order: SVU star stops by for chat with Attorney General
When Hollywood and Washington meet, the geeky government bureaucrat is usually the one in awe of the movie or television star.
But when “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” television heroine Mariska Hargitay stopped by the Justice Department to meet Attorney General Eric Holder, the awe was focused squarely on the the chief law enforcement officer.
Describing their meeting as a “huge thrill”, Hargitay described Holder as a “rock star.” She is in town as part of the commemoration of the 15th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act which was aimed at focusing more resources and attention on violent crimes against women.
She was joined in her meeting with Holder by her husband and fellow actor Peter Hermann and their 3-year-old son, August. The attorney general handed their son a little coin that senior administration officials give out as souvenirs to visitors and, according to August, told him: “Don’t lose it!”
Hargitay will also be testifying before a House Judiciary subcommittee on Thursday about the backlog of rape kit tests.
She is best known for her starring role on “Law & Order: SVU” as detective Olivia Benson, but has also starred in movies and other television hits like “ER”. Her show was spared the ax last week when NBC canceled the long-running original series “Law & Order.”
- Photo credit: Reuters/Jeremy Pelofsky (Hargitay and her husband stop by to talk to reporters at the Justice Department)
Holder: collective administration decision on possible bin Laden trial
(UPDATED – adds Tuesday hearing delayed)
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder drew a lot of attention last week when he told Congress that he believed that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would never be captured alive and declined to say how he would be prosecuted if that hypothetical capture actually came to fruition.
Holder offered a somewhat clearer answer on Monday to that question ahead of a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Tuesday that is expected to delve deeply into the Obama administration’s policies for prosecuting terrorism suspects. (The hearing was postponed until April 14 because many lawmakers plan to attend the healthcare bill signing.)
“If Osama bin Laden were captured, a decision as to how to proceed would be made at that time in consultation with the President’s full national security team,” Holder said in written responses released on Monday to questions submitted for the record by the committee after its last oversight hearing in November.
The attorney general has been harshly criticized by Republicans and even some Democrats for deciding to prosecute in criminal court the five alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, including self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Some have argued that they should be tried in a special military court to avoid giving the suspects full U.S. legal rights or a potential platform for their anti-American views. Some in Congress are trying to block funding for trials in traditional criminal courts. The White House has had to intervene and is now reconsidering Holder’s decision, though officials have defended the criminal courts as a tested means for such prosecutions.
Lawyers who worked on detainee issues now in Justice Dept. under scrutiny
(Updates to add comment.)
There has been a lot of attention lately on a small group of lawyers who were hired by the Obama administration’s Justice Department and previously worked on legal arguments for detainees seeking release from the controversial prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
A few Republican lawmakers initially sought the identity of the individuals and their responsibilities, questioning whether they were working on detainee matters at the Justice Department.
Federal ethics rules limit government officials from being involved in specific cases they had previously worked on in the private sector.
Much of the controversy erupted when Keep America Safe, a group led by former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney, joined the chorus seeking their identity and ran an Internet video advertisement with a blistering attack on the Obama administration for employing them.
It called the lawyers “The al Qaeda 7″ and questioned whether the Justice Department was really the “Department of Jihad.”
That advertisement and criticism of the lawyers has drawn widespread condemnation from Democrats as well as Republicans, including former members of the Bush administration, who said that such defense work was critical to the American justice system and that providing individuals with defense counsel was critical.
When any family or other member of Dick Cheney’s entourage can prove they possess the slightest qualification to talk about ethics, wake me up.
Eric Holder – stand your ground.
Aaron Harison – go quail hunting with Dick.
Attorney General Holder in virtual shouting match over Christmas bomber
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder rarely raises his voice. But at the very end of a three-hour congressional hearing on Tuesday he was in a virtual shouting match with Virginia Republican Representative Frank Wolf.
Wolf, questioning whether valuable intelligence was lost, was furious about the initial hourlong interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man captured after trying to ignite a bomb aboard a U.S. commercial jetliner on Christmas Day last year.
“There were so many things that were missed,” Wolf said during the hearing.
He suggested that photos of detainees released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should have been shown to Abdulmutallab amid concerns that some may have joined militant groups. Wolf said Abdulmutallab also should have been shown a picture of an American-born cleric believed to be in Yemen and tied to al Qaeda militants.
“Did you see this man? Did you see this man? Did you see this person? You didn’t have enough time to do that,” Wolf said. “So there was an opportunity that was missed and we’ll never get it back again.”
Abdulmutallab told investigators that al Qaeda militants in Yemen trained him and gave him the bomb he tried to ignite.
Holder, who had kept his cool for much of the hearing, shot back at Wolf: “That’s simply not true.”
Bill Clinton said he was within one hour of capturing Bin Laden.
But he walked away empty handed. So much for missed opportunities.
Seems both sides have missed opportunities…….
Attorney General Holder escapes DC snow for Florida, defends decisions
After the federal government closed for four days following two major blizzards, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder escaped to the warmer climes of Tampa, Florida, where he defended decisions on terrorism-related cases that have come under fire.
Republicans have harshly criticized Holder for deciding to prosecute the five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, including the self-professed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in traditional criminal courts rather than military tribunals.
He has also drawn bipartisan fire for planning to hold the trials blocks from the site where the World Trade Center twin towers stood amid new concerns about security and costs.
Additionally, the attorney general has been lambasted for how the Obama administration has dealt with the accused underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was arrested on Christmas Day for trying to explode a device aboard a Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
The suspect was interviewed for about an hour before he underwent surgery for his injuries. He stopped cooperating and was read his legal rights and subsequently charged in a criminal court. That all drew harsh criticism from Senator Kit Bond, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, among others.
He and other Republicans have argued that Abdulmutallab should have been deemed an enemy combatant, charged in a military court and been interrogated by intelligence experts rather than the FBI. The lawmakers have questioned whether valuable intelligence was lost as a result.
“We at the Justice Department are under fire for some of the decisions I have made. I’m convinced that those decisions are the right ones,” Holder said in a speech to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives Symposium in Tampa.
it’s very helpful to attorney peoples. thanks!!!!!!!!!
more myspace friends
Dear Eric Holder, go swive yourself. You love The Wire but you won’t get behind the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s recommendation that the United States drastically shift our approach on the completely failed, propaganda based and counterproductive War on Drugs that has cost American tax payers trillions of dollars. I guess if we stop this senseless hypocrisy of raiding law abiding citizen’s homes and crowding our prison’s with persons who choose to get a buzz smoking marijuana instead of drinking whiskey (34,000 people die from drunk driving every year in the U.S., btw) then you won’t get to see the drug dealing gang-bangers shooting each other up in the inner-city of Baltimore in your new season of The Wire, huh? Anyhow, like I said, you inconsistent sellout twit go swive yourself until you can’t feel anything up there where the sun don’t shine. And be sure to give Gil Kerlikowske something long and thick so he can do the same. No reason why you should be the only sell-out half-wit knuckledragging bobblehead to get the appropriate treatment for sticking good people in prison on behalf of prison corporations, alcohol producers and pharmaceutical companies.